Hu was born into a merchant family and grew up in Taizhou, Jiangsu province. As a youth, he distinguished himself academically, and in 1965 he earned a hydroelectric engineering degree from Tsinghua University in Beijing. While a student there, he was recruited to join the CCP. Following graduation, Hu served as an assistant instructor at the school before being sent to work for a year as a construction worker in Gansu province during the Cultural Revolution. He later held several technical and political posts in the province.

In Gansu Hu began an association with Song Ping, a party elder and fellow Tsinghua graduate who became Hu’s mentor. By 1982 Song had appointed him to a series of posts and introduced him to the CCP general secretary, Hu Yaobang. Within the next two years, Hu Jintao had moved to Beijing and risen to general secretary of the Chinese Communist Youth League (CCYL), a post once held by Hu Yaobang. In 1985 Hu Jintao was appointed party secretary for Guizhou province, where he helped implement educational and economic reforms. Named a member of the CCP Central Committee in 1987, he was dispatched to Tibet a year later as a provincial party secretary, and in 1989 he imposed martial law in response to unrest there. When Song retired in 1992 as one of the seven standing members of the Political Bureau (Politburo), he successfully lobbied for Hu to replace him.

At the 1992 CCP Congress, Hu was appointed a member of the Secretariat of the CCP Central Committee, a key post that enabled him to establish networks throughout the party. In 1998 he was elected vice president of China, and the following year he became the vice chairman of the CCP Central Military Commission. By 2002 Hu had emerged as the heir apparent to President Jiang Zemin, and in November of that year he succeeded Jiang as general secretary of the CCP. In March 2003 Hu was elected president of China by the National People’s Congress. He consolidated his power in September 2004 when he was named chair of the Central Military Commission (CMC) following Jiang’s resignation. In November 2012 Hu stepped down as general secretary, and the party congress elected Xi Jinping to the office. At the same time, Hu also relinquished his post as chair of the CMC to Xi, who until then had served as vice chairman of the commission. Xi was elected to replace Hu by the National People’s Congress in March 2013.